Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Trade Review: UTHR

As noted in my the setup post for the UTHR trade, I had placed my stop below the August 14th confirmation candle. I was stopped out today for a small loss.

I highlight this trade because, frankly, it was not one of my better entries. Take a look at the chart for UTHR:




Technically, the setup was nice and in fact, still is not bad. That's the problem. My entry left me with no choice but to place my stop at an exit point that prematurely takes me out of a still developing setup.

Notice that my stop was above the huge late July breakout bar and just a above the 50day ma. A more ideal place for my exit would have been just under the moving average and breakout bar. However, since my entry was too far from these support lines, I had to place my stop under that confirmation bar (at $105 rather than $103) to better manage risk. I don't allow for big or even meduim size losses.

In hindsight, I either should have passed on this trade or waited for a pullback that improved my entry and gave me a better stop while still fitting with my risk parameters..

This one goes in the journal as a bad trade.

1 comment:

StockKevin said...

Do you look at weekly charts as well or do you find the daily charts to be sufficient for your time frame? It looks like you have 3 - 6 months on your daily charts.